Someone in Arizona—Phoenix’s Macayo’s and Tucson’s El
Charro both make claims—accidentally dropped a fully stuffed burrito
into a deep fryer. Eventually, actual Mexicans started making this
staple, as you’ll find at this inner-Southeast taqueria. More.

Bernell “Fatman” Austin of Atkins, Ark., started
battering, frying and selling pickles out of his Duchess Drive In in
1963. The family still has a secret recipe, served only at the Atkins
Picklefest. Crown Q does a nice version with sliced dill and creamy
sauce for $5. More.

The version of the Korean taco we know came from the
nation’s most diverse city, Los Angeles, where in 2008 chef Roy Choi
began stuffing corn tortillas with beef bulgogi and barbecued short
ribs. Portlander Bo Kwon opened Koi Fusion in May 2009, with a concept The New York Times described as “borrowed from Mr. Choi’s in the manner that 50 Cent sampled Biggie Smalls.” More.

Colorado will forever be known as the first state to serve
up legal weed brownies as treats instead of medicine. In Oregon,
they’re still medicine. But, as they say, a spoonful of sugar helps it
go down. More.

Apizza, New Haven’s famous riff on Neapolitan, is often
regarded as the best pizza in the world, with a thin, chewy and tangy
crust that’s cooked hot and fast, often over coal. Apizza Scholls’ pies
come out of a super-hot electric oven crisp but pliable and kissed with
char. After that crust and bright sauce, the toppings are almost
superfluous. More.

Scrapple is a relic of colonial days, when people couldn’t
afford to waste meat. It’s a loaf of slurried pig—snout, eyeball, liver
and heart—made mealy with corn and served fried. Nonetheless, the
weekend brunch scrapple served with maple glaze at the Woodsman Tavern
is a remarkably civilized experience. More.

Fun fact: Traditionally, cooks didn’t even bake Key lime
pies, simply allowing a chemical reaction between sweetened condensed
milk and acidic citrus juice to cook the eggs, like a meringue ceviche.
The best we’ve had in town is cooked by a mysterious couple and
delivered to this wonderful little Ladd Circle coffeehouse three times a
week. More.

A tangy, spicy, smoky, one-pot meat dish with beans,
tomatoes and corn, all simmered in stock, Brunswick stew makes
appearances at church suppers and hunting camps throughout the South.
The hearty $7 version at this downtown food cart has smoked chicken and
potatoes. And they even throw in a mini moon pie. More.

The plate lunch isn’t authentic Hawaiian, but it’s what
you get after a trip to the beach. There’s white rice and/or macaroni
salad with meat, usually pork, katsu or teriyaki beef or chicken.
L&L actually comes from the islands, with restaurants in every
neighborhood on O‘ahu. More.

This old-school diner blends ice cream made with Idaho’s
state fruit, the huckleberry, with housemade Purple Haze hibiscus syrup
for a shockingly sweet shake, with bits of fruit skin and a mountain of
whipped cream. More.

This staple of Chicago’s South Side is a thin-sliced,
sauteed roast beef sandwich drenched in meat-dripping “jus,” with
giardiniera hot peppers on top. Bridge City’s comes wetter than an
otter’s pocket, and chock-full of meat and jus that’s been prepped for
days. Hunch forward or plan on changing your shirt. More.

According to legend, Nick’s Kitchen in Huntington, Ind.,
was the first to make this spaceship of a sandwich. It features a large,
buttermilk-soaked, breaded pork cutlet that extends well beyond the bun
meant to house it. This cart’s version has everything Indiana’s does
except tomatoes. More.

Acclaimed by some as America’s finest blue cheese, the
Maytag’s first “wheels” were made in 1941 at Maytag Dairy Farms in
Newton, Iowa, with homogenized cow’s milk instead of sheep’s milk.
Cheese Bar’s Steve Jones serves it with pride: His father used to work
at Maytag Dairy Farms. More.

The famous barbecue comes from Missouri, sorry. Kansas
invented not a food but a means of producing it—from the first
train-supplied chain restaurant, Harvey House, to the original White
Castle, to Pizza Hut in 1958. To this day, when you call Pizza Hut for
delivery, you’re actually calling a Kansas call center. Kansas? Are you
there? Please bring extra peppers. More.

Two strips of bacon, two slices of cheese and some of the
Colonel’s secret sauce sandwiched between two fried chicken fillets in
lieu of bread. Lick as you may, your fingers will never again be clean. More.

Beignets are a deep-fried Creole dessert pastry that are
light, airy and covered with heaps of powdered sugar that, when inhaled
through the mouth, will induce coughing fits in novice tourists. The
Parish’s Sunday brunch beignets are the closest you’ll get in Portland
to those served at New Orleans landmark Cafe du Monde. More.

Maine’s most famous roadside food is wicked simple: a heap
of juicy lobster bits doused in butter and served cold on a toasted
roll. The owners of the Maine Street Lobster cart fly in lobster twice a
week. More.

Crab cakes are a secondary religion in Maryland. Only the
plentiful Chesapeake blue crab is in the dish, served as lumps with a
little bit of cracker crust. It’s basically heresy to serve a blue crab
cake in Oregon, where we’re proud of the more delicate flavors of
Dungeness. But Ruth’s Chris has no such pieties—it’ll cost you $10 per
cake. More.

Clams are an integral part of summer in coastal New
England, just as important as tall ships, widow’s walks and sipping a
dark ’n’ stormy next to 10 men in Red Sox caps. The unassuming
Fishwife’s clam basket is a heaping mound of plump fried clams atop
waffle fries, served with generous helpings of tartar sauce, coleslaw
and seasoned ketchup. More.

This Nordic dish of cod dried in lye until gelatinous is
loved and hated in Minnesota, where the burg of Madison claims to be our
nation’s lutefisk capital, and where the dish is popular in church
basements. It seems to be more texture than taste, at least the way we
cooked it. More.

Mississippi Avenue is the place for Mississippi cuisine in
Portland. Miss Kate’s food cart owner Charlie Hudes’ Grandma Kate was a
bridge-playing socialite in Vicksburg. She would be proud of his
catfish: The batter is crisp and peppery, while the meat inside is
sweet, white and flaky. More.

Created when an Italian chef in the Hill neighborhood of
St. Louis dropped ravioli in hot oil, toasted ravioli in St. Louis means
a plate of big, breaded pasta pillows stuffed with provolone and beef
or veal, served around a bowl of dipping marinara. Alameda’s version
doesn’t have meat, but it’s the only reliable source in town. More.

Elk is higher in protein than beef, but it doesn’t taste
much different when ground—milder and slightly sweeter. The Deschutes
brewpub serves it on a brioche bun with Gruyere cheese, roasted shallot,
thyme mayo and lettuce. More.

The mighty Reuben sandwich—rye, kraut, swiss, corned beef
or pastrami, secret sauce—was purportedly invented by Lithuanian
transplant Reuben Kulakofsky of Omaha, Neb., as part of a weekly poker
game from 1920 to 1935. If there’s a 15-year poker game going on with
Reubens in Portland, it’s certainly at Goose Hollow Inn. More.

Even on the hottest days, you’ll find people lined up in
front of Chowdah. The signature soup is creamy, steaming and salty, with
generous chunks of potatoes, bacon and two types of Atlantic clams. More.

This processed-pork product is called a “roll” because a federal law passed the year Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
was published (1906) stopped Taylor Provisions Company from selling it
as “ham.” In Jersey—and at Tasty N Sons—that pork roll is pan-fried, put
on a hard roll with egg and cheese, then garnished with ketchup and
mustard. More.

The green chile cheeseburger best brings New Mexico’s
Latinos, Native Americans and chuckwagon-fare cowboys together on one
plate. The Blue Goose’s thick slab of beef is served on a soft bun with
super-sweet tomato, ground chile peppers and a layer of crispy cheese.
It’s one of the best things we’ve eaten during the course of this whole
crazy 50 Plates project. More.

At Buffalo’s Anchor Bar in 1964, someone had the crazy
idea of taking the chicken wings marked for the soup pot and turning
them into an icon. The Anchor Bar’s owner deep-fried them, slathered
them in Frank’s RedHot, and gave birth to an American classic now found
in every town in this big country. More.

Pulled pork is usually served with vinegar-based sauce,
but there’s sort of a civil war being waged in North Carolina whether
the sauce should have ketchup mixed with that vinegar. You needn’t pick
sides. Nonetheless, Tails & Trotters serves its excellent, tender,
vinegared pork with garlic aioli and no ketchup. More.

Lefse is a thin flatbread made from potatoes, cream and
butter that’s hand-rolled and cooked on a griddle, then served, most
commonly, with butter and sugar. They love them in North Dakota, which
like neighboring Minnesota, is heavily Scandinavian. This cart has crazy
salmon or rhubarb concoctions, but stick to the simple: butter and
sugar. More.

35. Ohio

White Castle sliders, available in the freezer case at Fred Meyer, various locations, fredmeyer.com.

There’s one thing pretty much everyone in Ohio agrees on,
and that’s the burger. It was invented in Akron, and the best burgers
there are small and topped with only rehydrated onions, dill pickle
slices and yellow mustard. Don’t screw around with Portland’s
ketchup-contaminated, fresh-onion sliders. Because those aren’t sliders.
At least not in Ohio. More.

Chicken-fried steak is an integral part of Oklahoma’s
insanely complicated state meal—though, like former Sooner football
stars Adrian Peterson and Greg Pruitt, it’s from Texas. The dish is made
with a cheap cut of steak and bread and fried like chicken, then sopped
with gravy. The Country Cat has one with kale on the side. More.

Pierogi are Eastern European dumplings filled with
potatoes, sauerkraut and/or meat, widely available back in the Rust
Belt. Some very nice ladies sell their own from the basement of this
Sellwood church every Saturday from 11 am to 2 pm. They’re $7 a dozen
(cash only), served hot with sour cream and caramelized onions, or
frozen to go. More.

Little Rhody has, mile for mile, double the number of
exotic foodstuffs found in any other state—pizza strips, gaggers,
johnnycakes, stuffed quahogs—none of which makes it past Woonsocket.
Make your own version of its official state beverage with an $11 bottle
of coffee syrup, basically a hyper-sweet coffee concentrate. More.

Coastal fishermen—particularly in Charleston, S.C.—have
been waking up and frying “breakfast shrimp” in bacon grease and tossing
them on grits for generations. South Carolina even named it the
official state food. Bernie’s offers a wonderfully piquant take on the
dish—albeit after traditional breakfast time, since Bernie’s opens at 4
pm. More.

41. South Dakota

Fry bread at Teepee’s food truck, 4926 SE Division St., 971-777-1315.

Native American author Sherman Alexie called this
deep-fried staple “the story of our survival” because it helped stave
off starvation on the long walks to, and lean years in, reservations.
It’s the official state bread of South Dakota, which has a huge Sioux
population. More.

Authentic Nashville hot fried chicken is hot. Very, very
hot. Not warm, not
spicy—sweat-pours-out-of-your-ears-dear-God-don’t-touch-your-eyes fiery.
And that’s if you order “medium.” No one in Portland is attempting real
hot chicken, but this is the closest you’ll find. More.

Podnah’s Pit makes a killer Texas red chili—so spicy, so
beefy—and then Rodney Muirhead honors Lone Star tradition by making an
authentic in-bag Frito pie. Because if you’re using a bowl, you might as
well piss on the Alamo. More.

Nick Zukin, who has probably eaten more hamburgers than
any man in Portland, went to Utah for the model of Kenny & Zuke’s
burger: the pastrami-topped, fry-sauced monstrosity invented by the
Greek family who ran Crown Burgers in Salt Lake City. More.

Virginia’s famous country hams are from peanut-fed pigs,
salt-cured for months and then aged until they’re a true New World
prosciutto. The Woodsman Tavern and the Bent Brick both order from the
highly regarded Edwards Country Hams in Surry. At the Bent Brick, it
comes prosciutto-thin on a swanky board. More.

Once home to Nirvana, Singles and Windows 95,
Seattle is now known for Macklemore, Amazon warehouses and this
coffee-dusted milkshake with “rich mocha sauce, vanilla syrup, and
Frappuccino® chips, blended together with Frappuccino® roast, milk, and
ice. Topped with chocolaty whipped cream and Chocolate Cookie Crumbles.” More.

Southern Italians who came for the opportunity to work in
Appalachian coal mines invented this basic dish: salty, greasy pepperoni
baked in puffy dough until the bright red spices soak into the bread.
East Glisan’s version is stingy with the pepperoni, but the best you’ll
find in town. More.

Where the buffalo don’t roam no more. South Portland’s
40-year-old Buffalo Gap has buffalo wings, its own barrel-aged Buffalo
Trace bourbon and the option to make any of its stacked, half-pound
burgers with bison instead of beef.More.